Quotes About Presence

...[T]he mechanics of life should never be allowed to interfere with living.

At times, it's better to think of exactly what is happening right in front of you every second, rather than going through things from the past in your mind.

We are about the hurried business of living life while missing it in the very process of living it.

Only if we live consciously, we can die consciously.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.

God's presence is the one inescapable fact of human life. We will encounter him in one way or another. Those who make a place for him find him to be the glue that holds everything together. Those who ignore him find their lives to be askew and cannot understand why. They have left out the most crucial factor in the equation of their lives, so that everything will always be unbalanced. The Lord God is either a sanctuary to dwell in or a stone to stumble over.

Is God really with us? The answer to the question is "yes." God has come to take up residence with us as one of us. How has that fact been accomplished? By giving him a human mother but no human father.

Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to the shimmering red presence in the clear night sky...

You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through. Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day. Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you.

Take time to see the quiet miracles that seek no attention

You should always except the present company.

The things that people were the most grateful for were the ordinary things in life. The sound of your spouse's laugh, the smell of morning coffee, the echo of children playing in the yard. The little things. In waiting for the big moments—the vacations, the retirements, the birthdays—we risk missing the experiences of life most worthy of celebrating.

During tragedy, the same is true. When we get diagnosed with a difficult disease, when we lose a dear friend, when things fall apart in our lives, we seldom long for someone to come in and fix it with words. No words will ever take away our pain. No, we long for someone to have the courage to be with us, sit there with us, cry with us. In other words, we want someone to be fully present with us.

The goal of prayer is to live all of my life and speak all of my words in the joyful awareness of the presence of God. Prayer becomes real when we grasp the reality and goodness of God's constant presence with 'the real me.' Jesus lived his everyday life in conscious awareness of his Father.

God is so immense that if he were 'too visible,' people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there.

Would a soul continually eye His everlasting tenderness and compassion...[then] it could not bear an hour's absence from Him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour.

Do not neglect the gift of prayer. Pray especially when you do not have time to pray, when prayer makes the least sense, and when God's aliveness seem the least likely version of reality.

Deep, unmediated, and inexpressible experiences do occur.12 All the traditions agree that in moments of grace, moments perhaps almost unnoticed, a person may move apart from all mediated meanings. No language. No culture. No words. No images. For those moments, one abides in simple and pure consciousness, sharply aware of the mystery surrounding us all.

We tend to view compassion as something we project outward—that is, as a presence or gift we offer to another person or on behalf of a suffering world. This keeps compassion as an act of superiority, something the healthy offer the sick. We rarely offer the gift of compassionate presence to our own person.

Jesus' ministry had roots in grace expressed primarily through the quality of presence: the way he chose to be present, in relationship and in the company of others, even with those who wished him harm.

The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness.

God's reality is overwhelmingly intrusive in all the details of life.

Would you want to go to heaven if God were not there, only His gifts?

Emotionalism can also assume that heightened feelings are the infallible sign that God is present. They're not. The emotions that singing is meant to evoke are responses to the truths we're singing about God—his glory, his greatness, and his goodness.